On the Bay

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NOTES OF A GASTRONOME about oyster farmer Mike Osinski. Mike Osinski was an acquaintance of the writer who lived in his apartment building. One day, the writer ran into Osinski on the street. He was now living in Greenport, Long Island. “I'm a bayman!” (Baymen are the region's traditional seafood hunter-gatherers.)…”I harvest oysters. I'm a new man…” Osinski was born in 1954, and grew up in Mobile, Alabama. The writer ran into him a year later, after a morning of his deliveries. Gramercy Tavern had taken his oysters and other restaurants-Esca, Four Seasons, BLT Fish, La Bernardin-had followed. Greenport is 100 miles from Manhattan, on the upper reaches of Peconic Bay. Mentions Sandy Ingber, the chef at Grand Central's Oyster Bar. Osinski's oysters are called Widow's Holes, after the pond behind his house. The writer went oyster harvesting with Osinski one cold December morning. Describes the history of oyster farming. Greenport mayor Dave Kapell told the writer about two giant canneries-Lester & Toner Company and the Long Island Oyster Company-which went bankrupt in the 1960s. Oyster consumption dropped in the late 20th century due to overharvesting, pestilence, and pollution. As a result, oysters today are mainly a nostalgia food, rarely eaten at home but served in restaurants. Describes Osinski's boat. The writer helped him pull in cage after cage until he found the one he wanted-with oysters smaller than 3 inches. After he found the right cage, they sorted through the purse's take, filling a sack for Le Bernardin, saving the larger ones for other restaurants, and putting the smaller ones back for next year. They'd been on the water for 5 hours, and the day had yielded 170 oysters; Osinski gets 70¢ an oyster-that's $119. Until recently, Osinski had been making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but his secret ambition had always been to be a writer and to live by the sea. He always seemed to be getting fired from jobs, owing to his congenital messiness. Previously, he'd been a computer programmer. The writer next met Osinski in Greenport on the first day of winter. As they had a breakfast of oysters, the writer asked Osinski if he chewed; Osinski slurped, but didn't chew. When he eats oyster, Osinski said, he feels like he's “connecting to something primordial.” The writer calls oysters the food equivalent of the salty air. Eric Ripert, chef of Le Bernardin, admitted that he chewed oysters. He claims his mother warned him that if he didn't chew, the oyster would be alive in his stomach. Mentions marine biologist Kim Tetrault. On the writer's third trip to Greenport, their first cage yielded 700 oysters, a second cage yielded almost as many, and, after the third, Osinski had nearly 2,000 oysters. But they hadn't caught somethine wild and rare; they'd merely relocated parcels that Osinski had dropped in the water previously. Refers to William K. Brooks's 1891 masterpiece, “The Oyster.” As an underwater farmer, Osinski buys seed oysters that he then plants in cages in his underwater plant. Mentions Steve Malinowski, head of the Fishers Island Oyster Company, where Osinski buys his seed oysters. Malinowski runs the only hatchery on Fishers Island, having acquired Ocean Pond Oyster Company, which was founded by Carey Matthiessen and his brother, the writer Peter Matthiessen. Oysters like warm water-they reproduce when it reaches 70 degrees. Describes an oyster's reproductive process. They're not just hermaphrodite; they're protandrous: capable of alternating their sex. Malinowski showed the writer six oyster brooders. He admitted that he chewed oysters, too. Malinowski's oysters offered a sweet taste that kicks in after the fifth chew. In an oyster, as with wine, you should be able to taste the place it came from....